


the road gets tough (i don't know why)

by singsongsung



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 06:42:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12427116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: From the corner of the parking lot, a voice said, “Hey there, Juliet.”A tag to 2x02.





	the road gets tough (i don't know why)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sylwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylwrites/gifts).



> Thank you to sylwrites for giving me her Betty Cooper feelings to work through in my own way. 
> 
> Also, I recognize that it is unwise to ride a motorcycle in shorts and a t-shirt. Just - creative license. 
> 
> Title from Lana Del Rey's "Born to Die."

Betty gave Pop one last hug before she turned her gaze to the darkness outside the diner’s windows. The parking lot was faintly, warmly lit by the diner’s sign, but beyond it, the world was pitch black. 

“Want me to call you a cab, honey?” Pop asked. 

She shook her head. The rational side of her brain, the one that had planned this whole night with single-minded and uncompromising determination, was slowly giving way to the recklessness inside of her that she so very rarely let run free. The right choice would be to let Pop call her a taxi, or at the very least to call Archie, who would drive over and pick her up in his father’s truck that still smelled heavily of disinfectant and fabric cleaner, or call Veronica, who would send one of those shining black town cars with ever-silent drivers her family used. There was, after all, a killer on the loose, yet again. 

But she’d been trying to be right, to _make_ things right, for what felt like hundreds of hours now: sleeping very little, stepping right up to Cheryl Blossom in a locker room, sitting in what felt like a horror movie set with a woman who looked like she’d nearly been burned alive, staring up at a judge presiding over a courtroom, up at Mayor McCoy standing on the steps above them with impatience in her eyes, up at the ugly graffiti on a diner that felt like her second home. Betty wanted to fix things, to yank her town out of this new wave of misery and back into something good, or at the very least, something _okay_ , and for a moment, it felt like maybe she had - until her mother strode up to her with her most disapproving face on and accused her of complicity in the town’s drug problem. 

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to walk home, by herself, breathe in the cool night air, be engulfed by the darkness, killer be damned. Her nails dugs into her palm one by one, a habitual movement that felt almost purposeful in its slowness, its intensity: index finger, middle, ring, pinky, one sting after another. 

“I’m so glad this worked,” she told Pop, offering him a patented Betty Cooper smile, and opened the diner’s door, the bell above her head not quite hitting cheerful notes. 

 

 

 

From the corner of the parking lot, a voice said, “Hey there, Juliet.” 

Betty whirled around, her right hand uncurling from its tight fist, the breeze brushing across fresh cuts, making her suck in air between her teeth. “Jughead?” He was leaning against that motorcycle of his, wearing a grey knitted sweater that seemed incongruous next to the bike. “Hey - ” She headed toward him. “Are you okay? Did something happen with your dad?” 

“No. I mean, not really, just - ” He stopped short, his eyes earnest in their focus on her face, brows furrowing ever-so-slightly in a way she’d learned to recognize; it meant he was thinking something serious, something about her. “Are _you_ okay, Betts?” 

“Of course.” She reached up to touch her ponytail as though she suspected it had come undone in some way, giving off a sense of un-okayness. She had no reason not to be okay. Her father was not in jail, her father had not been shot, her father had not returned home from prison with an iron will and expectations. 

Before she realized just what he was doing, Jughead reached for her wrist, turning it so that her palm faced upward, four neat red lines revealing themselves to him. 

“It’s just been a stressful night,” she said quietly. 

He nodded, and he gave her that, he let her pretend that a busy night, a desperate effort, was reason enough to make herself bleed. “I know.” He lifted his other hand to the back of her head, pulling her in closer to him, and pressed a kiss to her forehead so firm it felt like it burned its way into her skin. When he pulled back, he said, “Wait here, okay?”

He ran into the restaurant and returned with a roll of gauze, which he wrapped around her hand in more layers than were really necessary before ripping an end with his teeth. 

“There,” Jughead said, and in his voice, in that single word, that single syllable, she recognized her own resolve. _There_. Now it is fixed, now it is better, like a band-aid applied with enough hope can stem the bleeding from a bullet hole. “Let me give you a ride home.”

_Congratulations, Betty. You’re almost single-handedly responsible for giving crime a haven in Riverdale._

“I don’t want to go home, Jug,” she whispered. A crack ran through the middle of her words, the middle of her throat, the middle of her chest. 

Jughead’s hand found her uninjured one. He curled his fingers around hers and squeezed. “I know a place.” 

 

 

 

“Is this illegal?” Betty whispered, shivering outside a ground floor window at Riverdale High as Jughead jimmied it open. In her shorts and t-shirt, she’d found the rush of air during the brief motorcycle ride cold in a cleansing way, but now she was desperate for warmth. 

“If it is, I’m apparently in bed with a sketchy lawyer, so don’t worry.” 

She blinked. “What?”

He got the window open and pushed it upward, then turned toward her. Something flickered through his eyes, and instead of replying, he stamped a kiss against her lips before stepping back. “Ladies first.” 

Betty eyed him for a moment. “You just want to look at my ass.” 

“I can like those shorts _and_ be a gentleman, Betts.” With a hint of a smirk, he tilted his head. “C’mon, in you go.”

She clambered through the window and dusted herself off as she waited for him to do the same, looking around the Blue & Gold office. “I miss you here," she said wistfully, more to herself than to him. 

“I miss being here with you, too.” He came to stand in front of her and put his hands lightly on her waist, dropped his forehead against hers. “Hi.” 

She lifted her hands and linked them at the back of his neck. “Hi.” 

She sank into the kiss her gave her, releasing a quiet little sigh as she pressed close to him, enjoying the warmth of his body against hers. They hadn’t talked about it yet, the _almost_ , and she’d been meaning to, she really had, but it had been impossible to find a moment amidst everything else. But now - now, she didn’t want to talk. She wanted to take _almost_ and turn it into something much less tentative, something that didn’t only go halfway. She tugged lightly at his sweater as she backed up, taking one slow step after another until the backs of her thighs ran into an unused desk. 

Jughead’s hands tightened on her waist, and he used them to help her up onto the desk, lifting her slightly as she gave a little hop. He stepped between her legs, making a low, growling sound in his throat as he dipped his head to kiss her neck, and Betty breathed out another sigh, one that seemed to tremble through her lungs and along her bottom lip, and when she slid her fingers into his hair and pulled, he dug his teeth into her skin. 

“Juggie,” she breathed, and dropped both her hands to the fly of his jeans, fumbling a little with her bandaged hand as she undid the button, began to drag the zipper downward. 

“Betty,” he murmured, leaning back enough to look at her face. “Here? I - ” Her hands scrambled under his sweater, under his t-shirt, searching for skin, and he exhaled shakily before skimming his lips over hers like he couldn’t stop himself. “I don’t have a condom,” he said quietly, one hand slipping into her hair at the base of her skull.

“I don’t care,” she said. 

His hands stilled against her, and when she tilted her chin up for another kiss, he didn’t give it to her. “Betts,” he said softly. He ran his fingers through her ponytail, no urgency now, just gentleness. “Yes, you do.” 

“I don’t,” she insisted stubbornly, but even to her own ears, her voice sounded quiet, uncertain. “I’ve cared all week, all I’ve done is care, even when no one else gives a _fuck_ , even when everyone else is just willing to accept - to accept shit, and injustice, and that our whole town changing. All I did was care. And now I just want to be a normal teenager for half an hour and have sex with my boyfriend instead of worrying about gangs or drugs or _murder_ \- ”

Jughead put a stop to her words with the slide of his hand down to the back of her neck, his thumb stroking gently over her skin, a soft amount of pressure guiding her face against his neck. “Shh, babe,” he said, his voice remarkably tender, and it was only when her eyes left moisture against his collarbone that she realized she was crying. 

 

 

Ten or twenty minutes later, he kissed her hair and asked, “Do you want to watch a movie?” 

“What?” she murmured, her voice choked and wet. 

“There’s a projector in here somewhere, and a VHS player. The school has copies of some book-to-film adaptations. We can probably watch _To Kill a Mockingbird_ or _The Scarlet Letter_.” He cupped her face in his hands and swiped his thumbs under her eyes, clearing tear tracks away. “We’ll have a movie night. We can be normal teenagers. We can raid the vending machines. Make out a little. Or a lot.” 

She nodded, swallowing around the lump in her throat that hadn’t yet disappeared. “Okay.” 

He ran his hands lightly down over the sides of her neck and her shoulders, and then rubbed at her bare arms. “You’re cold. Here, take this.” He pulled his sweater over his head and handed it to her. 

“Thanks,” she said, sniffling. When she poked her head through, she found that he was looking at her intently. 

“Betts,” he said. “How much you care - it’s something I really love about you. You don’t just care about me and Archie and Veronica, you care about the whole town. You care about everything, and everyone. Even when they don’t deserve you. I mean, I’m not sure that I do.” 

“Don’t, Jughead,” she said, matching his tone. “Of course you do. You’re - ”

“No, stop, I’m not - I’m not trying to have a pity party. I’m not trying to make you take care of me right now. I’m just trying to say… that you’re amazing. And I love you. And I know how much you’ve done, how much you’re doing for me. How much you’ll do, if I needed you to, without me even asking.” He leaned in and placed a soft kiss on the corner of her mouth. “Thank you. I’m trying to say thank you.” 

The recklessness that had wound her fingers into such tight fists, that had steered them to the zipper of his jeans with abandon, seemed to retreat; it was not gone but calmed, daring rather than destructive, something to explore at will. “You’re welcome,” she told Jughead, and he gave her one of those soft smiles of his, the ones that always set her heart aflutter and turned her darkness to light.

“I wish I could take you out of here,” he said. “Just for a weekend. Hell, just for a day.” 

“You can,” she said, reaching for his hand and intertwining their fingers. His calluses brushed against her skin and she very nearly shivered at the feeling. “For a night. Take me to Boston with Hester. To Alabama with Scout.” She smiled at him and it felt easy, unstrained. “Or to fair Verona, where we lay our scene.” 

Jughead returned her smile, and at the sight of that smile she felt like she always had with Jughead - like he was on her side, on her team, and they could make things work. Like how much she loved him, not only as her boyfriend but as her childhood friend, as her partner in crime, was enough. Like it had to be.

He said, “I’ll see what I can do.” 

 

 

fin.


End file.
